[kevin fewster, vecihi basarin, hatice basarin] ga(bookos.org)

GALLIPOLI

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KEVIN FEWSTER was born in Australia in 1953. He has been research-ing World War I for the past twenty years and from 1976 to 1979 he taughthistory at the University of New South Wales, Royal Military College,Duntroon. He holds a PhD from the University of New South Wales, wasthe inaugural director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, andis now the Director of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Kevin Fewsteris the editor of Gallipoli Correspondent: The frontline diary of C.E.W. Bean,published in 1983. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in2001 for services to museums and maritime heritage.

VECIHI BASARIN was born in I.stanbul, Turkey in 1947. He trained in

Turkey as a chemical engineer and later lived and worked in Norway, theUnited States, Brazil, Germany and the United Kingdom before migrat-ing to Australia in 1973. He recently established his own consultingcompany after working many years in energy and engineering related fieldsas a manager.

HATICE HRMZ BASARIN was born in I.zmir in Turkey in 1955.

She trained in Turkey as a town planner and migrated to Australia in 1979.Since then she has completed a Masters degree in urban planning at theUniversity of Melbourne and has worked as a policy and research officeron land use planning, local government and public housing related issues.

Vecihi Basarn and Hatice Hrmz Basarn are coauthors of The Turksin Australia: Twenty-five years down under which was published in 1993 tocelebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of migration from Turkey. Thebook focuses on the achievements of families on the very first migrantcharter flights that flew from Turkey to Australia in 1968. They have twodaughters, Zeynep and Alev.

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GALLIPOLIThe Turkish Story

Kevin Fewster

Vecihi Basarn

Hatice Hrmz Basarn

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This edition published in 2003First edition published in 1985

Copyright Kevin Fewster, Vecihi Basarn and Hatice Hrmz Basarn 1985 and 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrievalsystem, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapteror 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by

any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given

a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of non-original material reproduced inthis text. In cases where these efforts were unsuccessful,

the copyright holders are asked to contact the publisher directly.

Allen & Unwin83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

Email: [email protected]: www.allenandunwin.com

National Library of AustraliaCataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Fewster, Kevin.Gallipoli: the Turkish story.

Bibliography.Includes index.

ISBN 1 74114 045 5.ISBN 1 74114 161 3 (special edition)

1. World War, 19141918CampaignsTurkeyGallipoliPeninsula. 2. World War, 19141918Turkey. I. Basarn,

Hatice Hrmz, 1955 . II. Basarn, Vecihi, 1947 . III. Title.

940.426

Endpapers: This exceptionally fine, hand-knotted silk rug was produced in 1916, probably inI.stanbul, to commemorate the Ottoman victory at anakkale. Not only do the rugs colours coincide

with those frequently used on topographical relief maps, they also evoke very successfully the hues ofthe coastline around the Gallipoli Peninsula. The rug is now owned by the esteemed Australian rug

dealer and collector, Mr Jacques Cadry. Kindly lent by Jacques Cadry

Set in 12/14 pt Granjon by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, VictoriaPrinted in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For our parents and for John, who fought his own

battle with courage and quiet dignity.

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Contents

List of maps viii

Acknowledgements ix

A note on terminology xi

Place names on the peninsula xiii

Pronunciation of the Turkish alphabet xv

Turkish/Ottoman history: A brief chronology xvi

Introduction 1

1 A special bond 6

2 A proud heritage 29

3 Defending the homeland 49

4 . . . a brave and tenacious enemy 785 Honour is restored 102

6 From Atatrk to Anzac Day 130

Postscript: Symbols for tomorrow? 147

Notes 152

Bibliography 157

Index 161

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List of maps

Republic of Turkey 4

The Ottoman Empire 35

The Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915 50

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Acknowledgements

Like our first book, this work is truly a cooperative effort. Not onlydid three of us combine to write it, we were greatly assisted bymany others who generously offered their time, expertise and friend-ship. We are especially indebted to the Cadry family, Rabbi JeffreyKamins, Darel Hughes, Mr Peter King MP and Niyazi Adal whofirst suggested we should revise and update our earlier work and whoensured we had the means to realise this ambition. John Iremonger,Ian Bowring, Emma Jurisich, Karen Penning and Catherine Taylorat Allen & Unwin enthusiastically supported us from the moment wefirst discussed the idea with them.

We also wish to thank our photo researcher, Carolyn Newman;Zafer Polat who provided source documents and photographs;Engin Aksa who supplied material relating to Upfield SecondaryCollege; Yksel Ylmaz who helped publicise our Turkish commu-nity survey; John Mundy for advice about the Newfoundlanders atGallipoli; Mahnur and Orhan Ugur for their assistance at Gallipoli;Kenan elik for advice on place names; Seluk Kolay and Dr MarkSpencer regarding AE2; staff at Foto Balm in I

.zmir; staff at the

anakkale Military Museum, and Major-General Steve Gower,Ashley Ekins and Peter Stanely at the Australian War Memorial.

We are grateful to Turkish Airlines and Ahmed Basar for theirgenerous support of our project.

In addition, we wish to acknowledge those people who materi-ally assisted us with the first version of this book: Ron Harper, CarmelShute, Abdul Ayan, Necati Basarn, Barbara Helper, MarianneGraham, Harvey Broadbent, Ragp Hanyal, Esen and Ertugrul

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Alparman, Dr Zofia Rueger and Kamuran Koyunoglu. We wereparticularly indebted to Gallipoli veteran Mustafa Yldrm and othermembers of Melbournes Turkish community who graciously agreedto be interviewed for the book.

The following authors and publishers generously permitted usto quote from their books: CEW Bean, The Official History of Aus-tralia During the War of 191418, vols. 1 & 2, Angus and Robertson,Sydney, 1921, 1924; Gallipoli Mission, Australian War Memorial,Canberra, 1952; HM Denham, Dardanelles: A Midshipmans Diary,John Murray, London, 1981; R East, The Gallipoli Diary of SergeantLawrence, MUP, Carlton, 1981; Gammage, The Broken Years, ANUPress, Canberra, 1974; P Liddle, Men of Gallipoli, Penguin, London,1976; A Moorehead, Gallipoli, illustrated edition, MacMillan, SouthMelbourne, 1975; J Murray, Gallipoli 1915, William Kimber & Co.,London, 1965; M Tunoku, Anzaklarn Kaleminden Mehmetikanakkale 1915, Ankara, 1997; and cartoonist Bill Leak.

The source for each photograph used is acknowledged in itsrespective caption. We are especially grateful to the AustralianWar Memorial for permitting the use of so many images from itscollections.

Finally, our greatest debt of thanks goes to Zeynep, Alev andCarol for their patience and unfailing support throughout theproject.

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A note on terminology

Many Western history books (including virtually all histories ofthe Gallipoli campaign) use the terms Ottomans and Turks,and Ottoman Empire and Turkey as if they are interchangeable.The words may be synonymous to English-speaking peoples, but infact they have quite specific historical meanings.

The Ottoman Empire was founded by a Turkish tribe in thefourteenth century AD. As it expanded, many other ethnic groupscame under Ottoman control. By the time the empire reached itspeak in the seventeenth century, the Turkish component of its popu-lation (most of whom lived in Anatolia) was probably a minority.Many other ethnic groupsGreeks, Kurds, Arabs, Bulgarians,Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Hungarians, Armenians, Macedoniansand otherswere also citizens of the empire.

In the early years of the empire, the Imperial Ottoman Court wasmainly under the control of Turkish tribes but, as time passed, theseother ethnic groups began asserting control over the affairs of state.

Many non-Muslims, who changed their name and their religion,served the sultan as administrators, trade or commercial agents, orin some other capacity. These people, called devshirme (meaningconverted or recruited), became an important political force. Thesultans harem followed the devshirme tradition. Many of its womenwere kidnapped, bought or offered as gifts from various parts of theempire. If not already Muslim, they were converted to Islam andgiven Muslim names. Some even mothered the imperial children. Itis quite possible, therefore, that many of the sultans were of non-Turkish, non-Muslim blood.

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The terms Turk and Turkish were adopted as nationalisticsymbols by the Young Turks movement early in the twentiethcentury. This nomenclature became official orthodoxy in 1923 withthe founding of the Republic of Turkey.

We decided to use the term Turk only where it applies specifi-cally to Turkish people. Some of the Ottoman troops fighting onGallipoli were not Turks, so we thought it best to refer to them asOttomans. To have decided otherwise would have been like referringto Australians as the English. In line with historical conventions,however, all quotations have been left in their original form. Thus,the words Turkish and English often appear when, in fact, thewriters probably meant Ottoman and Australian.

For the sake of simplicity and consistency, the book uses theEnglish names of places except where no suitable English equivalentexists or where the Allied commanders adopted the Turkish title.

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Place names on the peninsula

In the first column are the English names (if any) for prominent orsignificant features on and around the peninsula. Then come theTurkish names with pronunciation, and finally, an English trans-lation of the Turkish names where appropriate.

Achi Baba Al Tepe (Ul/che Te/peh)Anzac sector Anafartalar (Anna/far/tala)Ar Burnu Ar Burnu (Areh/ Boor/nooh)Baby 700 Kl Bayr (Keh/lech Bah/yer) Sword RidgeCape Helles Ilyasbaba Burnu (Ili/us bah/bah

Boor/nooh)Chanak anakkale (Chuh/nuk/kah/leh)Chunuk Bair Conk Bayr (Jonk Bah/yeh/reh)Constantinople Istanbul (Is/tahn/bull)Dardanelles anakkale Bogaz (Chuh/nuk/ The Straits of

Straits kah/leh Bo/ah/zeh) anakkaleGaba Tepe Kaba Tepe (Kah/bah Te/peh)Gallipoli Gelibolu (Geh/lee/bo/looh)Hell Spit Kk Ar Burnu (Que/chuke Areh Little Bee Point

Boor/nooh)Hill 971 Koca imen Tepe (Ko/dja Chimen Hill of the Great

Te/peh) PastureJohnstons Jolly Krmz Srt (Ker/meh/ze Sehrt) Red RidgeKrithia Kirtenow Altepe

(Ul/che Te/peh)Kum Kale Kum Kale (Koom Kah/leh)Lone Pine Kanl Srt (Kahn/leh Sehrt) Bloody Ridge

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Maidos Maydosnow Eceabat (Eh/je/ah/but)

Mortar Ridge Edirne Srt (Ed/ear/neh Sehrt) Adrianople SpurThe Pimple Sehidler Tepesi (Sheh/hid/lehr Martyrs Hill

Te/peh/sih)Plugges Plateau Hain Tepe (Hah/in Te/peh) Cruel or

Traitorous HillQuinns Post Bomba Srt (Bom/bah Sehrt) Bomb SpurRussells Top Cesaret Tepe (Jez/sah/ret Te/peh) Hill of ValourThe Nek Boyun (Bo/yoon) NeckSalt Lake Tuzla Gl (Tooz/lah Gihr/lue) Salty LakeSazli Dere Sazl Dere (Sahz/leh Deh/reh) Reedy CreekSedd-el-Bahr Seddlbahir (Said/dool/bah/here)Shrapnel Gully Korku Deresi (Kohr/koo Deh/reh/sih) Creek of FearSuvla Bay Suvla Krfezi (Soov/lah Kerr/feh/zih)S Beach Morto Koyu (More/toh Koh/yoo) Morto CoveV Beach Ertugrul Koyu (Ehr/too/rool Koh/yoo) Ertugrul CoveW Beach Teke Koyu (Te/keh Koh/yoo) He-goat CoveX Beach I

.kiz Koyu (Ihk/kiz Koh/yoo) Twin Cove

Y Beach Pnarck Koyu (Peh/nahr/jehk Little FountainKoh/yoo) Cove

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Pronunciation of the Turkish alphabet

The modern Turkish alphabet has twenty-six letters and iswritten in Roman script. It does not have the letters q, w and xwhile it includes six letters which are not found in the Englishalphabet, g, , , s , . Each letter has only one sound. A pronun-ciation guide to the Turkish alphabet is provided below to assist thereader. Those letters which are pronounced the same way in Englishare not shown.

A a as a in far, carC c as j in jaw, jelly as ch n chin, chewE e as e in jetty, bedG g as g in goat, getG g (silent gnever occurs at the beginning of a word) as w inrowingI as e in answer, charterI.

i as i in sit, kitJ j as zh in treasureO o as o in go, row as i in sir, firS s as sh in shell, shoutU u as oo in book, look approximately as u in music

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Turkish/Ottoman history: A brief chronology

Sixth century BC Cyrus the Great, Emperor of Persia, invadescentral Asia where Turkic tribes live.

Fifth century AD Huns of central Asia invade Europe throughlands north of the Caspian Sea. (First majormigration wave.)

Eighth century Arabic/Islamic movements reach central Asia.Eleventh century Turkic tribes (including the Seljuks) begin

moving westward from central Asia throughlands south of the Caspian Sea. (Second majormigration wave.)

1071 Battle of Malazgirt; Byzantine Empire unableto prevent Turkic tribes from enteringAnatolia (modern-day Turkey) from the east.

Eleventh to Seljuks (one of the Turkish tribes migrating thirteenth westward) occupy most of eastern and centralcenturies Anatolia. Crusaders try unsuccessfully to

reverse this tide of occupation.1243 Mongols invade and defeat Seljuks. Many

small Turkic tribe/states are established inAnatolia, including the Ottoman tribe nearConstantinople. Ottomans expand into north-west Anatolia.

1357 Ottomans capture the town of Gallipoli from theByzantines and move to conquer the Balkans.

13571451 Ottomans expand influence in both Asia andEurope.

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14511566 Ottomans conquer all of the Balkans, south ofRussia, North Africa, Egypt and the wholeof the Middle East and Arabian Peninsula.

1453 Ottomans capture Constantinople and renameit I

.stanbul. End of Byzantine Empire.

15661683 Period of stability. Ottoman borders extendfrom Vienna to Iran and from Crimea toYemen.

1683 Ottomans lay siege to Vienna. Polish forces(and forces from other Germanic fiefdoms),called in by the Pope to assist the AustrianEmpire to fight off the infidel Turks, defeatthe Ottoman army.

16831792 Ottoman Empire in slow decline.17921878 Rapid decline, Ottoman Empire becomes the

sick man of Europe.1853 Crimean War. Ottomans join forces with

Britain and France to repel Russian threat toI.stanbul.

18781908 Brief period of stability.1908 Young Turks revolution.190918 Young Turks rule.191213 Balkan Wars. Joint forces of Bulgaria, Greece

and Serbia defeat Ottomans with relative ease.1914 Turkey enters World War I.1915 Gallipoli campaign.1918 Defeated Ottoman Empire disintegrates.191923 War of Liberation.1923 Republic of Turkey declared.1968 First government-assisted Turkish migrants

arrive in Australia.2001 53 000 Australians describe themselves as being

of Turkish ancestry (Census of Population andHousing, Australian Bureau of Statistics).

T u r k i s h / O t t o m a n h i s t o r y

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Introduction

The last surviving soldier of any of the armies that fought atGallipoli in 1915 died peacefully in a Hobart nursing home on16 May 2002, aged 103. Alec Campbell, a Tasmanian, lied about hisage and enlisted, aged 16, to go off to war with the AustralianImperial Force (AIF). He landed at Gallipoli on 2 November 1915.Known affectionately as the Kid to his soldier mates, he spent sixweeks at the front before being evacuated. Soon after, he contractedenteric fever and was invalided back to Australia in 1916, too ill tofight. The last Turkish survivor died some years earlier while thefinal English veteran passed away a few months before Campbell.

Alec Campbells death triggered a massive reaction across Aus-tralia. All major newspapers produced special supplements to com-memorate the passing of this, the last Gallipoli Anzac. Australias PrimeMinister cut short his official visit to China to attend the state funeral inHobart. At 11 a.m. on the day of his funeral, virtually the entire nationpaused for a minute out of respect for Private Campbell and all thoseAustralians who fought at Gallipoli and forged the Anzac legend.

Campbell was a reluctant hero. Only in his latter years did heattend Anzac Day commemorations and his family say he rarelyspoke of the war. In the words of his wife, he symbolised the youngsoldiers of the time who went eagerly off to war only to return withvery different emotions . . . He saw the futility of war as wouldanyone who went to war.1 In rejecting official offers to erect a statuehonouring his memory, the family emphasised that Alec Campbellnot only shied away from glorifying war during his life, he alsocampaigned vigorously for peace.

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Among the floral tributes laid outside Hobarts St Davids cathe-dral was a wreath sent by a local Turkish association. Until recentyears, it would have been seen as somewhat provocative for a localTurkish group to link itself to Australias Anzac experience. But, overthe past decade or so, there has been a remarkable change in the publicmood of these one-time protagonists. Turks and Australians haveseemingly buried their enmity and now see Gallipoli as a unique bondbetween the two nations. This mutual respect is aptly summed up bya small article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald the dayafter Campbell was buried. An Australian working in Montreal,Canada, had mentioned Campbells death to a Turkish work col-league. The Turk replied about the Anzacs: In Turkey, we dontconsider them as the enemy any more. They fought bravely, andTurkey is proud of the war fought on both sides. It was our greatestmilitary victory. But your sons, buried in Turkey, are our sons.2

Its quite likely that he made these remarks knowing that theyparaphrased Mustafa Kemal Atatrks immortal pronouncementalmost seventy years ago:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now livingin the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is nodifference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie sideby side, here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sonsfrom faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying inour bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, theyhave become our sons as well.3

Mustafa Kemal was the most imaginative, most successful officer tofight on either side at Gallipoli. At several moments in the campaignhis personal intervention was almost certainly the difference betweensuccess and failure for the Ottomans. Gallipoli launched his career.He subsequently became the first president of the newly formedRepublic of Turkey and the nations acknowledged founding father.

In the past decade or so Australians have become increasinglywilling to accept Turks and Turkey into the nations annual remem-brance of Anzac. This respect between Turk and Australian, bornout of war against each other, is truly unique. Come Anzac Day eachyear, neither Australias political leaders nor the RSL embraces the

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Germans or Japanese as it does the local Turkish community. Thisbook also attempts to explain why Australians and Turks now regardGallipoli as the war that made them friends.

Virtually every Anzac Day sees the launch in Australia of at leastone new book about Gallipoli. Invariably, they focus almost exclu-sively on the deeds of the Anzacs and, to a lesser degree, the otherAllied armies which fought on that now famous peninsula. Thearmies that opposed them receive relatively scant attention; likesupport actors in a play, their appearance is essential for the show togo on, but rarely are they allowed to move on to centre stage. Turkishhistories are much the same, with the balance reversed. Even ifnational chauvinism is disregarded, the lop-sided treatment in theAustralian books is, in some ways, quite understandable. The Allieswere the aggressors in the warthey were the invaders. Thus it isperhaps to be expected that Western accounts concentrate primarilyon the strategies and performance of those who initiated (andbungled!) much of the fighting.

But what of the victors? The Ottoman armies fought with greatdistinction on Gallipoli, yet, year after year, the overwhelmingmajority of children in Australia learn at school only the Anzac sideof the Gallipoli story. This book attempts, in a small way, to redressthis imbalance. It is as partisan as any other book on the subject, andfor that we make no apologies. We deliberately set out to write a bookthat challenges the orthodox version of the campaign. We hope thatour account of the events will encourage readers to reflect a little onthe battles themselves, on the way the Anzac legend has evolvedsince, and on the role it and other legends serve in our society.

This book has grown out of an earlier book, A Turkish view ofGallipolianakkale, co-written by the same three authors in theearly 1980s. Since then, major shifts have occurred both in howAustralians feel about Anzac Day and how Australias Turkish com-munity responds to the Anzac legend and the annual rituals of AnzacDay. Faced with these changes, we thought it time to totally reworkand update our earlier study.

All three authors came to this book with a strong personal anti-war commitment. In researching and writing the book, we have triedto strip away the glamour that is so often allowed to mask the terrible

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reality of war. Through describing the somewhat similar ways inwhich Gallipoli has been nurtured as a potent nationalistic symbol inAustralia, New Zealand and Turkey since 1915, we hope our readersmight reassess the function that Gallipoli has served in helping shapethe national culture and identity in each of these three countries.

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O N E

A special bond

Seldom have so many countries of the world, races and nationssent their representatives to so small a place with the praise-worthy intention of killing one another.1 This remark, made by aGerman officer who fought alongside the Ottomans at Gallipoli,aptly sums up the bloody reality of that famous campaign. Through-out 1915, Ottoman and German troops turned back repeated sea andland assaults from British, French, Indian, Newfoundland, Aus-tralian and New Zealand forces. In all, nearly a million men foughtthere. The battlefields were tiny; the casualties enormous. TheOttomans threw almost half a million men into the battle, of whom250 000 became casualties. Although no accurate records are available,86 000 Ottoman troops died there. The German contingent was verysmall and lost few men. British and Indian casualties totalled 119 696(including over 28 000 dead); the French suffered 47 000 casualties.Australias wounded numbered 27 700, of whom 8700 were killed,while the New Zealanders lost 7571 men (2701 killed). It seemsalmost incomprehensible that such casualties could be sustained inthis small area. Almost 50 000 Australians subsequently died on theWestern Frontwhen compared to that level of sustained butcheryin battle, we are tempted to view the Gallipoli losses almost as light.The Ottomans, by comparison, suffered more casualties at Gallipolithan in any other campaign of the war. In many regards, all suchcomparisons are invidious. What comfort is it for a dead soldiersloved ones or the maimed to be told that Gallipoli was not quite thehell of France and Belgium? Not quite . . . but hell all the same.

In Turkey, the campaign is known as the Battle of anakkale.

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This title connotes the phase of the campaign Turks regard as mostsignificant. anakkale is the name of the town situated on the Asiaticside of the straits which Europeans call the Dardanelles. The Turksview the campaign primarily as a battle for the anakkale straits(known by Europeans as the Narrows), a battle which they won prin-cipally because of the great naval victory they recorded in the straitson 18 March 1915. Australians and New Zealanders, on the otherhand, remember the campaign as Gallipoli because their forcesfought a land campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula. Like the Turks,they have chosen the name which emphasises their most significantand most successful contribution to the battle. It is interesting to notethat the British and French, who fought in both the sea and landbattles, refer to the campaign as Gallipoli or the Dardanelles.

For the British, French, Canadians, Indians and Germans, theGallipoli campaign is remembered as just another name in a long,tragic list of World War I battles. For Turks, Australians and NewZealanders, Gallipoli is something aparta significant event in theself-development of their individual nations. Gallipoli occupies aspecial place in the national memory. As such, the battles have notbeen allowed to fade in peoples memories. Each year, Australiansand New Zealanders remember their war dead on 25 April, the dateANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops firstlanded on the Gallipoli peninsula. The occasion is set aside as a publicholiday, with veterans marches and memorial services held in largecities and small towns across the land. In Turkey, the annual com-memoration centres around the decisive victory won over the Britishand French fleet on 18 March 1915. It is not a public holiday butsenior government and military figures attend special ceremonies inand around anakkale. In recent times, the Ottoman victory atGallipoli has been made the basis for Turkish nationalistic rhetoric,and the religious aspect of the campaign (the fight against the infidel),once utilised as the principal rationale for fighting the war, is nolonger even mentioned.

Nearly ninety years have passed since the campaignthus fourgenerations have reflected on what happened and what it mightmean. Turkey now remembers the campaign, above all else, forlaunching the career of Mustafa Kemal, the young officer who went

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on to become Atatrk, the inaugural president and founder ofmodern Turkey. Kemal displayed brilliant leadership qualities atGallipoli; his rapid appraisal of a situation and measured responseproved, on several occasions, the difference between victory anddefeat. Senior officers, jealous of his success, ensured that his deedsdid not receive any public credit at the time. Kemal won almost allhis victories against the Anzacs, yet his name was unknown to themuntil after the war. Today, the once unsung hero is acclaimed as themaster general of the campaign. A massive concrete monumentdominates Chunuk Bair commemorating his contribution tothe anakkale victory. Busloads of Turkish tourists flock to thememorial. For them, and almost all Turks, Gallipoli is rememberedfirst and foremost as a chapter in the life and legend of their nationsmost famous sonAtatrk literally means father of the Turks.

The passage of time has also affected how Australians perceiveGallipoli. People speak of it with such pride and feeling, you could

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One of five huge concrete tablets at Chunuk Bair that recount the deeds ofMustafa Kemal and his troops. The configuration of the monoliths symbolises amans hand cupped towards the sky in prayer. H. H. Basarn


be mistaken for believing it was a great military victory, not a lament-able strategic blunder. Thus, when his yacht Australia II trailed threeraces to one in the 1983 Americas Cup, Alan Bond (an Englishmigrant) cheerfully told the press: We had our backs to the wallthere [on Gallipoli], and we won that one. Another Australian hadto remind him that Gallipoli was a military tragedy salvaged only bya mass withdrawal. The defiant Bond then added that what hemeant by the Anzac analogy was that Australians do not give upwithout a fight.2 It was an easy error to make; the campaign is gen-erally described in terms which highlight the strengths of the Anzacsperformance and skate over their shortcomings. The Anzacs arepraised for the landing and evacuation, acclaimed for capturing theredoubtable Ottoman trenches at Lone Pine, and pitied for being ledby British officers, many of whom are claimed to have been half-witted. Australias Gallipoli, as portrayed in Australian director PeterWeirs highly successful feature film of the same name, is remem-bered as a triumph of the Australian character over a hostile foe,difficult terrain and incompetent leadership. The Turks might havewon the battle but we won the fight, is what most Australians liketo believe. There are grains of truth in all these observations, but theyalso contain many fallacies and a good deal of folklore.

After Gallipoli, generations of Australians perceived the Turksas dour, determined people. In 1983, for example, a Melbourne jour-nalist wrote: The Turks, of course, are incredibly dogged, a factknown to every grandparent and schoolchild since 1915. They dugtheir toes in at Gallipoli and theyve dug them in now at the CitySquare.3 The newspaper was reporting on a hunger strike staged incentral Melbourne by nine Turkish men attempting to persuade theAustralian Government to sever diplomatic relations with Turkeysthen repressive military government.

Over the two decades since then, a sea change has occurred inAustralianTurkish relations. Gallipoli is for most Australians stilltheir primary point of contact with Turkey and Turkish people. Butnow the 1915 battles are seen as things that bond the two nations. Anew respect, even a sentimentality, has emerged with Johnny Turktoday being a figure much more loved than hated by Australians. InAustralia and Turkey, it has almost become obligatory to mention


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Gallipoli whenever the other country is the subject matter. Forexample, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, when dispatching a mobilemedical caravan in July 2001 to the victims of the 1999 earthquakein Turkey, said: Australians share a special bond with Turkey thatgoes back to another terrible experience at Gallipoli. And that sharedexperience makes our community effort even more meaningful.4

Despite the passing of the years, the Gallipoli story is still passeddown with the same passion as in earlier generations. Australianschoolchildren still listen to stories of brave Simpson and his donkey,the gallant attack at Lone Pine, the selfless charge at the Nek, or somesuch tale of Australian bravery. Each year the children are asked toobserve a minutes silence in memory of men and events theyprobably do not understand. No-one could pass through the Aus-tralian education system without becoming aware of Gallipoli, butfew students realise that the Anzacs were invaders. Even after all

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This German-made gun, reputedly used at Gallipoli, was brought to Australiaafter World War I and placed in a park in Maldon, Victoria. It was restored by thelocal RSL sub-branch as its 1988 bicentenary project. V. Basarn


these years, the Anzac legend, like all legends, is highly selective inwhat it presents as history.

The interesting thing is that, in some ways, the legend has beenredefined in recent years to embrace the Turkish soldiers along withthe Anzacs. In recent times, Australias annual Anzac Day remem-brance has focused less on the battles and more on the human valuesthat shone through during the fighting. When viewed in this light,the Anzac and Ottoman soldier can each be seen as sharing muchthe same fate; fellow sufferers rather than sworn enemies. This senseof a shared experience between the soldiers of the two countries hascreated a special affinity between the two nations. The retiring NSWRSL President, Rusty Priest, highlighted this point in 2002 when headdressed a special event staged in his honour by the Consul-Generalof Turkey and the NSW Council of Turkish Associations. In MrPriests words, Australia and Turkey are perhaps the only two coun-tries in the world that have a strong friendship born out of a war.5


11

A similar gun in action on Gallipoli in 1915. AWM A05287


In saying this, he was echoing similar sentiments expressed byTurkeys Prime Minister, Blent Ecevit, at the eighty-fifth anniver-sary commemorations held at Anzac Cove in April 2000.6

The 1915 Gallipoli battles have undoubtedly been the majorfactor in fostering closer ties of friendship between Australians, NewZealanders and Turks at both national and local levels over the pastdecade or so. The first steps along this path were taken in 1985 whena small group of Australian veterans returned to Gallipoli as guestsof both governments to commemorate the seventieth anniversary ofthe campaign. The Turkish government announced it was officiallyrenaming Ar Burnu beach Anzac Cove. Australia reciprocated bynaming a park near the Australian War Memorial in Canberra aswell as a stretch of coastline near Albany in Western Australia (wherethe first Australian Imperial Forces convoy sailed in 1914) afterKemal Atatrk. For its part, New Zealand renamed a prominentpiece of land near the entrance to Wellington Harbour in honour ofAtatrk.7

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Ar Burnu beach, officially renamed Anzac Cove by the Turkish governmentin 1985. H. H. Basarn


The seventy-fifth anniversary of the campaign attracted evengreater attention. Fifty-four Australian and six New Zealandveterans, accompanied by the Australian Prime Minister, BobHawke, and the New Zealand Governor-General were joined bypolitical leaders from Turkey and Britain plus around 10 000 peoplewho gathered for the dawn service at Anzac Cove. Hawke was thefirst incumbent Australian prime minister ever to visit Turkey. Theanniversary attracted enormous publicity, in particular, the Aus-tralian Broadcasting Corporations televising of the dawn service live


13

Australian veteran, Jack Ryan, embraces a Turkish veteran at the75th anniversary commemoration at Gaba Tepe, 1990. Common-wealth Department of Veterans Affairs


back to Australia. The seven-hour time difference meant that thelive coverage of the Anzac Cove ceremony commenced on Austra-lias eastern seaboard at lunchtime, just after the major Anzac Daymarches had finished.

During the days program, at Lone Pine, Prime Minister Hawkeunveiled a bronze information plaque researched and produced byDr Ross Bastiaan, a Melbourne dentist and Army Reserve officerwith a deep personal commitment to honouring Australias wardead. Bastiaan had conceived the idea after visiting Gallipoli in 1987and being disappointed by the lack of information for English-speaking visitors. He spent the next three years negotiating with theTurkish government to gain their approval. With support fromnumerous major Australian corporations, he produced ten plaques,each in four languagesEnglish, Turkish, German and Frenchthat were mounted at important locations between Anzac Cove andHill 971. Bastiaan has subsequently produced similar plaques forevery battlefield across the world in which Australians have fought.

Among the thousands in the crowd at Anzac Cove that day wasa Turkish academic, Professor Mete Tunoku. A few weeks earlierhe had organised an international conference in Ankara discussingaspects of the Gallipoli campaign. Standing in the cold half-light ofthe early morning, he recalls:

I was deeply touched when I observed the excitement and tearful eyes ofthose old soldiers landing in boats on the coast of Gallipoli before dawn justas it had been 75 years ago. But, this time they were greeted by theirTurkish friends with embraces and gifts and flowers. It was anunforgettable scene for all of us . . .

[A] pall of melancholy and sorrow hung over everything. Interestinglyenough, there was no enmity or anger . . . You could have thought theywere old friends who had just met after a very long time . . .

On that day, I met a very old Turkish veteran and an Anzac veteranstanding side by side. The Turkish veteran was trying to stand up straightwith the help of his walking stick. The old Anzac was looking around withtears in his eyes. Surely, both of them were thinking of the terrible days ofthe war and of the friends they had lost. At one moment, I saw the Turkishveteran gently putting his conspicuously veined big boned hand on theshoulder of the Anzac who, weeping silently, watched the hills and slopes.I remained speechless and rooted to the spot . . . This scene was the obvious

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expression of the meaning of anakkale battles. Evidently, the veteran wastrying to tell his friend through that touch, what he was unable to put intowords . . .8

Tunoku was so moved by the event he decided to make a study ofthe Turkish and Anzac veterans and their seemingly deep mutualrespect. He visited Australia and New Zealand in 1991 and ques-tioned twenty-seven elderly Anzacs on what they knew aboutTurkey before the war, how much contact they had with the Turksduring the battles, and if their views had changed since the war.Nearly all of them described their Ottoman opponents as brave andfair, or words similar. Sixteen of his respondents had made the 1990pilgrimage back to Gallipoli. One of them, JJ Ryan of Sydney,recounted his own special moment at the seventy-fifth anniversarycommemorations. During one of the battles, Ryan had capturedthree Ottoman soldierseasy going fellows, not too happy to becaptured. He removed their trouser belts to stop any chance ofescape.9 Hed kept the belt buckles as souvenirs and took them backto Turkey with him in 1990, presenting them to a Turkish officialwho reciprocated by presenting him with a special plaque. I subse-quently served in France, 96-year-old Ryan told Tunoku, but stillremember more of [the] Turkish campaign than other battles.10

Virtually every year since 1990, either the Governor-General,Prime Minister or a senior government minister has represented theAustralian people at the Anzac Cove service. The eighty-fifthanniversary in 2000, for example, saw both the Australian PrimeMinister and Turkish President in attendance. And it is not just inAustralia and Turkey that this new spirit of camaraderie is evident.Australian and New Zealand diplomatic missions across the worldall commemorate Anzac Day in some way or other. In 1999, MsBuket Uzuner, author of the first Turkish novel about Gallipoli,Gelibolu ve Uzun Beyaz Bulet (Gallipoli and the Long White Cloud),a story about a New Zealanders journey to Gallipoli in search of hergreat-grandfather killed in the battles, was invited in what shetermed an honourable gesture to attend the ceremony at the NewZealand Consulate in New York.11 In many places, the Australasianmissions stage a joint remembrance service. Such was the case in


15


Beijing, China, in 2002, where the two ambassadors, their staff,visitors and members of the local Australian and New Zealand expa-triate communities came together in the courtyard of the AustralianEmbassy to mark Anzac Day. The ambassadors also invited theirTurkish equivalent to solemnly read aloud Atatrks immortal linescomforting the mothers of those from all nations who lost their livesand now lie in peace beneath Turkeys soil.

Within Turkey, recognition of the Anzacs has increased mark-edly in recent years, probably because of the annual influx ofantipodean visitors, official and unofficial. Where Turkish schooltexts once described the enemy as consisting solely of English andFrench forces, school history books now make a point of identifyingAustralia and New Zealands Anzac contingents. In the late 1990s,Australian historian Alan Mooreheads now classic account of thecampaign, Gallipoli, was translated into Turkish and marketed forpeople who wish to learn more about the other side of the trenches.12

In 2001, the Ankara State Opera and Ballet company staged Gallipoli

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Cartoonist Bill Leaks comment on Australian politicians much publicised tripsto Anzac Cove. The Australian, 29 April 2000.


Martyrs, especially choreographed as a call for world peace and tocommemorate the Turkish, British, French, Anzac and Indiantroops who fought there.13 But perhaps the ultimate symbol ofrecognition came in 2002 as a leading Turkish daily newspaper,Cumhuriyet, sought to describe the powerfully unifying effect thatTurkeys strong performance in soccers World Cup was havingacross the nation. The paper sensed that the usual club versus cluband player versus player rivalries had been put aside. People acrossTurkey were using the word us when describing the national teamsvictories because the 23 [Turkish players] . . . in Korea were wearingthe same colours, red and white, as the flag of Mustafa Kemal andhis friends when they stopped the British, French and the Anzacs atanakkale.14

In Australia, four years after the first plane-load of governmentassisted migrants arrived from Turkey, a small group of nine Turksmarched in Sydneys 1972 Anzac Day parade behind the banner:Turkish Australian friendship will never die. The idea to marchcome from Kemal Dver, who had arrived in Sydney with his wifeand three sons as assisted migrants on the very first flight fromAnkara in October 1968. Before coming to Australia, Dver hadbeen a truck driver and a former Turkish heavyweight wrestlingchampion. In Australia, Kemal and his wife, Melahat, worked infactories. Sadly, Kemal was killed in a car accident in the late 1980s.Some years later, Melahat was interviewed about her familys life inAustralia. Regarding his Anzac Day initiative, she recalled:

When we first came my husband got involved in community affairs.Associations were set up. He was a good orator. On our first or secondAnzac Day here, he marched with a Turkish flag. Others said he was madto do so. Telling them that Turks hadnt invited the Anzacs to Gallipoli, hemarched and everybody clapped. He was the first one to do that. Then aftera few years he gave up. Nobody marches now [then?]. Instead of unitingand telling the government their problems, members of the Turkishcommunity were pulling in different directions. My husband felt frustratedthat his efforts werent appreciated.15

In the early 1980s, a decade after the groundwork had been laidin 1972, local Turkish groups again began seeking ways to involve


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themselves in their adopted countrys Anzac Day rituals. Undoubt-edly, their motives were many and varied: to celebrate their ownheritage as it relates to Gallipoli, to acknowledge the sacrifices madeby the Anzacs, and to find common ground which might foster theirown integration into Australias multicultural society.

At first these overtures were largely rejected. Melbourne is hometo Australias largest Turkish community and when the idea was firstmooted in the early 1980s that Turks might participate in Mel-bournes Anzac Day march, the States RSL President, Bruce Ruxton,stated bluntly: Anyone that was shooting us doesnt get in.16 Unde-terred, various Melbourne Turkish groups started up their ownAnzac Day memorial function. Anzac Day marches across Australiaare organised by the local RSL branches, thus any change to the daysformat requires their consent. Rather than allow the Turks to march,the RSL invited young Turks to join a young peoples guard ofhonour to line the World War I march to Melbournes Shrine ofRemembrance. Over sixty young TurkishAustralians, dressed inTurkish national costumes, joined groups of schoolchildren, schoolcadets, scouts, Legacy children and others along the route.

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A small contingent of Turkish migrants march in Sydneys Anzac Day parade,1972.


In the mid-1990s, the Victorian RSL branch finally recognisedchanging community opinion and invited two representatives of thelocal Turkish returned soldiers association to join the Melbournemarch. New South Wales soon followed Victorias lead. In both cases,the Turks were permitted to march because they were Australiasally in Korea, not because of their Gallipoli link, but one suspects thisdistinction was made for purely technical reasons. The same yearthat Turks first marched in Melbournes Anzac Day procession,Bruce Ruxton visited Turkey as the official guest of the Turkishveterans association. Soon thereafter, Ruxtons committee decidedthat because Turks and Australian diggers had served alongside eachother in the Korean War, a Turkish sub-branch of the RSL could beestablished in Melbourne. Turks now march in Melbourne, Canberraand Sydneys Anzac Day parade every year. To mark the eighty-fifthanniversary in 2000, the Turkish Ambassador arranged for a uniqueOttoman Marching Band to participate in the Canberra march. Thisinitiative was not without its problems, however, as the Ottomanstraditionally march to a slower beat than the Australians and, appar-ently, this caused minor mayhem to the order of the procession! In2002, a small Turkish group joined the Hobart march for the firsttime. It seems only a matter of time before Turks march in everymajor Anzac Day procession across Australia.

Now that the last Gallipoli Anzac has passed away, their medalsare proudly worn in the Anzac Day march each year by their children,or their grandchildren, or their great-grandchildren. While thesemarchers do not have any direct experience of Gallipoli, they marchout of respect for the men who earned the medals and the values theyfought for. Rusty Priest defines the Anzac values as compassion,understanding and thinking of others,17 while for the journalist andGallipoli author, Les Carlyon, the Anzac tradition means refusing togive up no matter how hopeless the cause, it means looking after yourmates, keeping your sense of humour, improvising and making do.18

With the passing of all the veterans, it seems probable that Anzac Daywill continue to hold its special place in Australian hearts only if itbecomes a celebration of these values rather than a day to cheer themighty warrior. As such, Australias Turks should be as welcome asanyone else to participate. Thirty-five years after Turkish migrants


19


first came to Australia in large numbers, Australias Turkish com-munities undoubtedly now feel that Gallipoli gives them a special tiewith their new homeland. In addition to marching on Anzac Day, itis becoming commonplace for TurkishAustralian youth groups totravel to Atatrk Park in Canberra or even visit Gallipoli itself.Invariably, the students must submit lengthy assignments on theirreturn home analysing their impressions. The dual loyalties felt bythese young people are well summed up by the comments of studentsfrom Melbournes Upfield Secondary College who reflected aftervisiting the battlefields:

When I was at Gallipoli, I prayed for soldiers of both sides. It wasunbelievable how the Australian soldiers, to prove themselves, attackedthe hill knowing they would be dead.

Anzacs lost the war but it was good to know that like the Turkishsoldiers they also fought heroically to represent their country.19

Along with Auburn in Sydney, the Coburg-Moreland area ofMelbourne is the nations most readily identified centre of Turkishculture, thus it was perhaps not surprising that the Moreland TurkishEducation and Social Affairs Centres large float in Melbournes 2001Centenary of Federation parade, called Roots of Friendship, featureda Turkish and an Australian soldier exchanging water and cigarettesduring a momentary ceasefire on Gallipoli. Another reflection of thisemerging bond is that when the long-serving RSL state presidents inNSW and Victoria, Rusty Priest and Bruce Ruxton, retired in early2002, special functions were organised by the Turkish ConsulsGeneral in Sydney and Melbourne honouring each mans invalu-able contribution to the historic and everlasting relationship betweenAustralian and Turkish traditional establishments.20

In his acceptance speech at the Sydney reception, Rusty Priest tolda story that captures perfectly the twin loyalties felt by many youngTurkishAustralians. During Priests term as RSL State President,he persuaded the State government to rename Sydneys imposing newGlebe Island Bridge the Anzac Bridge. From Armistice Day 1998,the bridges two massive A-shaped towers have flown an Australianand a New Zealand flag. Its Anzac symbolism was taken one stepfurther when the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority was persuaded

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to commission a 4.2-metre bronze statue of a World War I digger.Priest conspired with the sculptor, Alan Somerville, to leave a smallcavity beneath the figures left boot. The statue was duly producedand its ceremonial unveiling organised for Anzac Day 2000 at theBridges western approach. Quite coincidentally, the crane operatorwho was contracted to lift the large sculpture into position was theAustralian-born son of Turkish parents. Just before the lift was aboutto commence, Priest stepped forward and announced he had a smallcanister of sand he had collected some years earlier at Anzac Covewhich he proposed to place under the soldiers foot. According toPriest, the young crane driver, overcome by emotion, had tears in hiseyes as he skilfully manoeuvred the figure into place.

Many Australians now seek to experience first-hand the speciallink that Gallipoli gives to the AustraliaTurkey friendship. Until thelate 1980s, no more than a steady trickle of Australians ventured toGallipoli. In fact, Betty Roland, a Victorian, mentions in her bookLesbos, the Pagan Island that she was the only person at Lone Pine andGallipoli on Anzac Day 1961.21 Following the much-publicisedseventy-fifth anniversary commemorations in 1990, this trickle hasturned into a flood. Around 60 000 Australians now visit Turkey eachyear; between 15 000 and 20 000 of them descend on Anzac Cove forthe dawn service on 25 April. Why has there been such a dramaticupsurge in interest? First and perhaps foremost, many more Aus-tralians, especially young adults, are travelling overseas. Turkey is anattractive destination, offering fascinating cultural, historical and geo-graphical attractions at a much lower price than most parts of Europe.While acknowledging these practical realities, it also has to be saidthat there has undoubtedly been an upsurge in interest, especiallyamong young Australians, in the Gallipoli story, which has led to thepeninsula becoming a site of pilgrimage for many Australians.

Two Australian academics, Dr Bruce Scates and Dr RaeleneFrances, have studied the backpacker Anzac phenomenon and con-cluded that most young pilgrims are drawn to Gallipoli partly by themystique engendered through films such as Gallipoli but also oftenthrough identifying with original Anzacs of their own age, their ownname, or who came from their town or a town like it. Many youngpeople, the study suggests, retrace the steps of their ancestors to


21


reclaim a part of their own heritage.22 Turkeys media is certainlybaffled by the motives of the youthful Anzac pilgrims. In recent years,Turkish papers have carried several stories in late April admitting aninability to understand why young backpackers spend thousands ofdollars to be present at the dawn service, yet once there they get verydrunk and unruly on the eve of such a sombre ceremony.

Any visitor to the Gallipoli peninsula today cannot help but beaware of the 1915 battles. While some battlefield tours leave fromI.stanbul most groups first assemble in anakkale, on the Asian side

of the Narrows. In 1915, anakkale was a town of 16 000 people;today its home to nearly 76 000. Local businesses welcome thevisiting Australians and New Zealanders: you might choose to stayat the Hotel Anzac, dine at the Kiwi Restaurant or Anzac Bfe andbook your tour through the Troy-Anzac Travel Agency. One localpension (small hotel) tries to set the scene by offering a specialpackage which includes a screening of the Mel Gibson film Gallipolithe night before your tour!

Massive memorials to the fallen dot the landscape. The headland

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Something for everyone! As well as pointing you in the right direction, theseroadside vendors will gladly sell you olives and tomatoes. H. H. Basarn


at Cape Helles, for example, is dominated by the 41 metre tallanakkale Martyrs Memorial honouring the 250 000 Ottomansoldiers who died in the 1915 battles. Travellers taking the ferryacross the Narrows between anakkale and Eceabat (Maidos) seegreat Turkish memorials on each shoreline: on the Asian side a largesign simply cites the critical date 18 March 1915, while on theEuropean hills thousands of white rocks have been arranged inthe shape of a soldier with an accompanying message: Traveller,pause a moment to remember the dead. Coming ashore from theferry at Eceabat, you see the signs, in English, erected in the townsquare by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission directingnon-Turkish-speaking visitors to the various Allied cemeteries.

In all, there are thirty-two Allied cemeteries on the peninsula,twenty-one of them clustered around Anzac Cove. The two mainAnzac memorials are located on the site of each nations most famousengagement: at Lone Pine for Australia, and on the crest of ChunukBair for the New Zealanders. Their walls list the names of those many


23

Springtime in the Anzac Cemetery, Shrapnel Valley. K. Fewster


thousands of soldiers who lie in unknown graves. Individual head-stones of Australian and New Zealand men are found in practicallyevery cemetery. The green lawn plots studded with small memorialplaques and flowers are kept in immaculate condition by a team ofTurkish gardeners working for the Commonwealth War GravesCommission. The Turkish cemeteries are less formal, but can usuallybe recognised from a distance by the rows of cypress trees alwaysfound at Turkish cemeteries. These cemeteries have never been main-tained to the same standard as the Allied war graves. None of theTurkish dead have individually marked headstones. One Turkishvisitor to the area in 1925 commented:

The sea was cheerful as if she did not remember anything; the earth wascovered by deep green scrub from one end to the other as if it did not embrace

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Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace . . . Mustafa Kemalsfamous message, sent in 1934 to the first group of official visitors from Australia,New Zealand and Britain, are immortalised on one of the huge monuments builtby the Turkish government in the mid-1980s overlooking the sea near Anzac Cove.V. Basarn


the young bodies of thousands of men . . . Only the foreign cemeteries werelike white flower gardens on the sides of hills close to the sea. The only visibletraces are not of those who won but those who were defeated.23

Perhaps responding to such comments, in recent years the Turkishgovernment has erected a number of imposing new monumentshonouring their fallen soldiers. The most impressive is at ChunukBair where five large white columns symbolise a mans hand turnedupwards as if in prayer.

Curious tourists in search of less formal reminders of the battlescan still see much of interest. The metal ribs of one landing craftstill stand at the waters edge just north of Ar Burnu where theboat grounded in the shallows that fateful April morning long ago.A local man has, for many years, been collecting campaign relicsand displaying them at a small museum in the village of Altepe.The entire battle zone around Ar Burnu and parts of Suvla and


25

The reminders of battle are gradually fading. When this photo was taken in 1982,the remains of this landing craft were still clearly identifiable at North Beach.Twenty years later only a few ribs remain. K. Fewster


Cape Helles have been designated war cemeteries and, as such,cannot be resumed for any other purpose. Only gradually is theland returning to its native state. In the meantime, you can stillclamber into the remains of trenches, especially around JohnstonsJolly, or peer down deep tunnels. Until comparatively recently, theground was dotted with rusted bully beef tins, battered old waterbottles, spent cartridge cases and the like. A massive bushfire thatswept through the peninsula in 1994 and, more recently, the fast-growing ranks of tourists have all but denuded the ground of its

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Three young backpackers (an Australian, a New Zealanderand a Turk) pose for the camera in the re-constructedtrenches around Chunuk Bair, 2001. J. Griffiths


rusty relics. Nevertheless, a visitor today might still find an occa-sional item that has been washed to the surface by recent rains. Theundergrowth is now thick and prickly, yet anyone who fightsthrough it to explore more remote parts of the line may still seehuman bones scarring the surface as a chilling reminder of thatcarnage nearly nine decades ago.

For seventy-five years the Gallipoli battlefields were largelyleft undisturbed. But so great has become the flood of touristsin recent years, the Turkish government has had to build a newroad just above the beach at Anzac Cove and create a special areanorth of the Cove to accommodate the thousands of Australians andNew Zealanders who invade the peninsula for the Dawn Service on25 April. When even these improvements could not accommodatethe ever increasing numbers, the governments decided late in 2002that, commencing in 2003, Anzac Day services at Gallipoli would


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Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free . . . These good-naturedyoung revellers were part of the estimated 15 000 people who attended the dawnservice at Anzac Cove, 25 April 2001. Office of Australian War Graves


henceforth be spread over two days: the traditional Australian andNew Zealand services being held on 25 April and the Turkish inter-national, French and Commonwealth services on 24 April. Theantipodean tourists invariably bring along either their Lonely Planetguide or one of the several special Gallipoli books that have beenproduced by Australians in recent years. Local people give a broadsmile and freely offer assistance when you mention the word Anzac.Its hardly surprisingAustralians and New Zealanders have trans-formed Gallipoli into a flourishing industry and the local Turks arehappy to reap the profits.

For three years around the turn of the new century, historianDr Bruce Scates surveyed Australians, young and old, who weremaking the pilgrimage to the Gallipoli peninsula. Prior to their visit,he reports, virtually all his respondents had no idea of the scale ofTurkish losses. Being in Turkey makes you realise that they werefighting for their country and in their country we were the enemy,one Queenslander told him. Visiting the battlefields seems to trulybring home to people the common tragedy of war:

The most moving experience was meeting Turkish people visiting theirmemorials . . . They would cry and pray and acknowledge their dead withsuch respect. We stayed one night on Chunuk Bair. Some friends and Iwent to watch the sun go down and . . . a family of Turkish people arrived.We moved out of their way so that they could take photos . . . but theywanted us to [stay] . . . One old woman took hold of my arm and washugging me and crying . . . [A] young Turk . . . pointed to Rob and saidYou and me 80 years ago would be fighting but now we are friends . . . werespect you, Anzacs. Here were these two young men shaking hands andsmiling into the camera when they could have been fighting. It made methinkfor what? Why did all those men die? Was it so Rob and the youngTurk could stand today and be friends? I dont know.24

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T W O

A proud heritage

Over 2500 years ago in central Asia, there lived a group of dis-persed tribes loosely termed the Turkic people. Their namecame from the common language they spoke, a tongue somewhatsimilar to Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian. Most of the tribes weresheep-raising nomads who lived in tents called yurts, but some led asettled life. In many respects they were quite an advanced civilisation,knowing how to work iron and copper.

The lands and peoples of central Asia were, for centuries, underthe influence of the Chinese empires to the east and the Persianempires in the west. History records a Persian invasion of centralAsia as early as the sixth century BC. It is thought that the famousGreat Wall of China was built to stop raids by the nomadic Turkicand Mongolian tribes.

As time passed and the population grew, it became harder andharder to eke out a satisfactory living from the lands of central Asia.The nomadic tribes thus uprooted themselves and headed westward.A significant movement took place during the fifth century AD whenHuns from Asia invaded Europe through lands north of the CaspianSea. They dislocated many Germanic tribes, caused the downfall ofthe Western Roman Empire and established a short-lived state incentral eastern Europe. The Eastern Roman Empire (or ByzantineEmpire, as it was later called), with its capital in Constantinople,weathered the invasion.

Another major migratory move by nomadic Turkic tribesoccurred in the eleventh century. This time the travellers journeyedsouth of the Caspian Sea, then through Persia and Mesopotamia,

29


both of which were part of the Islamic Arab Empire. One of thelargest of the migratory tribes, the Seljuks, managed to seizeBaghdad, the capital of the empire, in 1055 and then advancedagainst the Christian Byzantine Empire. The Seljuks adopted Islamas their religion, then conducted a holy war against the infidel (non-Muslims). In 1071, at the Battle of Malazgirt (near Mount Ararat), theSeljuks defeated the Byzantine armies and began to occupy variousByzantine lands.

The move westward finally ended many decades later with theestablishment of the Seljuk state in Anatolia (part of todays Turkey).Konya became its capital. Anatolia (meaning east in Greek), AsiaMinor and Anadolu, which is the Turkish adaptation of Anatolia,are alternative names for the large area of land bounded by the BlackSea, the Aegean and Mediterranean. It has been the major routebetween Asia and Europe for hundreds of years. The famous SilkRoad, for example, passed through it.

The Turks were not the first people to settle the region. Anatoliais thought to have been one of the cradles of Western civilisation.The Hittites of central Anatolia, for example, were possibly the firstpeople to melt and cast copper and bronze. Many famous Greekcolonies flourished on the Anatolian shores. Great city-states such asEphesus, Pergamum and Troy were established here.

During the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, European Crusadersmounted repeated military campaigns in the Middle East andAnatolia. The Seljuks, wedged between the then-declining IslamicArab and Christian Byzantine Empires, bore the brunt of many ofthe Crusaders attacks. However, it was Mongols from the east ratherthan the Europeans who toppled the Seljuks in 1243 AD. After thisconquest, the centralised Seljuk authority in Anatolia crumbled asvarious Turkish tribes established control over different parts of theland. The tribes fought among themselves and regularly raidednearby Byzantine settlements.

One such tribe, based near Constantinople, was led by a mannamed Osman. From this small group of people grew the mightyOttoman Empire which, at its zenith in the seventeenth century,straddled the three continents around the Mediterranean Sea. Theybuilt a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual empire based on

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military power consolidated through skilled diplomacy. TheOttomans or Osmanllar (followers of Osman) regarded themselvesmore as Mslman (the followers of Islam) than Turks.

The Ottomans drew substantially on the military skills of theirTurkic past. The Turks were good, disciplined soldiers who werehighly respected for these qualities. They were superb horsemen andmostly led simple lives. In summer, they led their flocks of sheep torich highland pastures, then wintered on the warmer plains. TheIslamic Arab Empire had recruited the Turks in great numbers assoldiers, and by the tenth century, most generals in the Arab Empirewere of Turkish descent.

These military traditions were vigorously upheld for centuriesby both the Turkish people and the Ottoman Empire. However, asthe Empire expanded into Europe and as Ottoman armies wereposted futher and further from their homeland, opposition fromtheir families meant that it became increasingly difficult to maintainthe traditional practice of drafting Turkish/Muslim boys into thearmy as cadets. To compensate for this shortfall, young Christianboys from conquered lands, frequently orphans, were engaged asarmy cadets and converted to Islam. This practice was both partof a conscious Islamicisation strategy as well as a convenient way ofexpanding the forces loyal to the sultans.

The Ottomans devised their own strategies of war and utilisedmany mercenaries and collaborators from other ethnic and religiousbackgrounds. They offered attractive incentives to induce foreignersto fight for them. All Christian recruits, for example, were exemptedfrom paying taxes. The Ottoman armies were further strengthenedthrough the practice of taking very young boys from conquered non-Muslim lands to be converted to Islam and trained in the sultansarmy. The yenieri (new soldier), as he was called, daily learned andpractised the art of war. He lived in special quarters near the palaceand was forbidden to marry or own property. As compensation, hereceived high wages so the job was highly prized. Some families evengave bribes to ensure that their sons were drafted.

The Ottomans used a carrot and stick approach to control otherMuslim Turkish tribes. Conquered tribes were forced to pay annualtaxes to the sultan (or padisah, the equivalent of a king or emperor)

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and provide troops whenever required. Conversely, those soldiersfaithful to the empire were rewarded with plots of land. However,this land remained the property of the sultan and could be taken backor reallocated to somebody else at any time. This system enabled thesultans to forestall any internal challenges to their authority. Earlierrulers, whether they be Greek or Roman, had generally oppressedthe Christian peasant farmers. When the Ottoman armies evictedthese landlords, they lowered taxes. As the sultan was regarded asthe ultimate owner of the land, the new Turkish/Islamic overlordswere seen as merely caretakers of the land and its peasant population.This may explain why Ottoman rule generally was accepted quitewell. For the peasant in the field, life became a little more bearable.However, all this changed from the seventeenth century onwards, aspossibilities for further expansion diminished and the central gov-ernment squeezed the peasants more and more for taxes and, later,for conscripts into the army.

Before being influenced by Muslim Arabs in the tenth century,the Turkish people were pagans who worshipped nature. Their con-version to Islam accelerated during the period of migration throughPersia and Mesopotamia. Like many new converts, they soon becamestrong adherents and fought many holy wars against non-Muslims.The Islamic religion was founded by its prophet, Mohammed, earlyin the seventh century. Adherents of the faith must comply with fivebasic principles: they must accept Allah as the god and Mohammedas his prophet; they must pray five times each day; give alms to thepoor; fast in the holy month of Ramadan; and, if possible, make apilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The Koran isthe sacred book of Islam. Along with other religious codes, it formsthe basics of Islamic law which governs all aspects of life. Manyyenieries were reluctant converts, but the Ottomans developedappropriate strategies to persuade people to follow Islam. Extra taxeswere levied on non-Muslims and those who accepted the faith andadopted a Muslim name were promoted or otherwise rewarded.

The beginning of the Ottoman Empire is dated to around1300 AD when Osman established a small principality in the north-west of Anatolia. The Ottomans then began expanding into areasformerly controlled by the Byzantine Empire. In 1352, the Ottomans

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crossed into Europe via the straits of Gallipoli and started annexingterritory in the Balkans.

The narrowness of this waterway had always made it an attrac-tive passage between the two continents. As early as 480 BC, thePersian Emperor Xerxes crossed the Narrows to attack the Greekcities. The Persians constructed a bridge from boats and inflatedanimal skins, then reputedly transferred an army of half a millionmen from shore to shore in only seven days. Around 334 BC, theMacedonian king, Alexander the Great, with an army of 20 000 men,crossed the Narrows by boat at the beginning of a famous campaignthat took him all the way to India.

By 1400, most of the Balkan lands were under Ottoman rule, andConstantinople was surrounded. Then a series of unexpected attacksby Mongols from the east put a stop, at least temporarily, to anyfurther Ottoman expansion. Indeed, the emerging empire almostdisintegrated. The Ottomans quickly reorganised, however, andafter a brief period of internal turmoil, re-established their rule. TheByzantine capital, Constantinople, fell to them in 1453 and wasrenamed I

.stanbul.

The city was almost deserted when the conquerors moved in, butits population increased steadily and totalled nearly three quartersof a million people by the seventeenth century. I

.stanbul was home

to many different ethnic and religious groups, all of which wereallowed to control their own affairs and keep their language andtraditions. As the capital of the Ottoman Empire, I

.stanbul established

itself as a leading centre for trade and culture. Its cosmopolitannature was probably meant to reflect the empire itself.

The straits of anakkale (Dardenelles) were always of the utmostimportance to the Ottomans. Before they seized Constantinople,control of the straits was essential if the empire was to remain united.The waterway assumed an even greater strategic importance onceI.stanbul became the Ottoman capital. In 1463, two castles were built,

one on either side of the straits, at Kilitbahir (lock of the sea) inEurope, and anakkale in Asia. The forts guarded the narrowestpoint in the channel. The thirty cannons in each castle could firecannon balls from one shore to the other, effectively sealing thestraits.


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Over the next two centuries, the Ottomans expanded theirempire until it stretched from Vienna to Iran, and the Crimea toYemen. The Mediterranean Sea was virtually an Ottoman lake! Theempire reached its peak in the seventeenth century when any furtherexpansion was deemed impracticable due to the extreme difficulty ofconducting military campaigns along such extended supply lines.Also, the empire now bordered formidable new enemies such asAustria, Iran and Russia.

When the empire stopped expanding, the traditional sources ofgaining extra revenue also dried up. This revenue was needed tosatisfy an overblown administration and military, so the tax burdenwas shifted increasingly on to the peasants. These higher taxes nodoubt caused discontent among the population. Also about this time,the English, Dutch and Portuguese took control of trade with Indiaand thus deprived the Ottomans of another valuable revenue source.The economic downturn precipitated a general decline in theempires fortunes. Things remained relatively stable throughoutthe seventeenth century, but territories were lost one after anotherin the two subsequent centuries. The slide began in earnest in 1683when a large Ottoman army was routed at the gates of Vienna by arelief force comprising Polish forces and troops from a number ofsmall Germanic fiefdoms that came to the aid of the AustrianEmpire upon a call by the Pope to fight off the infidel Turks.

As the cracks grew ever wider in the empires faade, manyattempts were made to reorganise the army and navy, the tax systemand the bureaucracy. Nothing, however, succeeded in reversing thedownward trend. The rise of powerful nation states such as France,England and Germany with their immensely increased capacity toproduce goods cheaply due to the Industrial Revolution signalled thedemise of an empire which still relied essentially on a feudal, non-mechanised pattern of production.

The European powers had, for many years, dreamed of carvingup the rapidly declining Ottoman Empire. They could not agree,however, on how to divide up the spoils. Napoleon Bonaparte onceremarked: The major question is who shall have I

.stanbul, not

whether the Ottomans survive. Whenever one power tried toacquire a chunk of the empire, the others invariably objected and

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Gallipoli

The

Turkish Story

3/2/03 8:10 AM Page 35

threw their support behind the Ottomans. In the Crimean War of185456, for example, the British and French joined with theOttomans to stop Russia annexing Ottoman territory. A large fleetof British and French warships sailed through the Dardanelles andup the Bosphorus to attack Russian towns on the Black Sea coast.

In the decades following the French Revolution of 1789, the ideasof progress, freedom and popular nationalism began spreading intothe western areas of the Ottoman Empire. Many ethnic groupsbegan demanding their freedom, their cause invariably receivingthe support of some or other of the great powers opposed to theOttomans. This upsurge of nationalism and the consequent creationof many small new nations proved to be the straw that broke thecamels back, as the Ottomans lacked both the authority andthe military power to arrest the trend.

By 1910, the sick man of Europe, as the empire was called, hadlost most of its colonial territories. France had taken Algeria andTunisia, the British occupied Egypt, and Italy had seized Tripoli.Then, during the Balkan wars of 191213, the Ottoman armiesoffered only six weeks of token resistance against Bulgarian, Greekand Serbian forces. At one stage, the border shrank almost to I

.stanbul

itself.It was about this time, largely as a reaction to the embarrassing

losses and sacrifices that the Ottomans seemed constantly to beenduring, that an aggressive new political force emerged in I

.stanbul.

Calling themselves the Young Turks, this group sought to replacethe old Ottoman style multi-ethnic empire with an empire of Turks.The Young Turks appreciated only too well that the Ottomans (therulers) of the empire had long since severed ties with their Turkishbackground in the belief that the Turkish peasant of Anatolia wasneither cultured nor refined enough. The language of the sultanscourt (Osmanlca) had very little resemblance to the Turkish spokenin Anatolia. The nobles used so many words of Arabic and Persianorigin that outsiders found it difficult to understand them! Moreover,the imperial court and government usually preferred to recruitpeople for high positions from its European dominions; even thesultans mother was often of non-Turkish origin. The Young Turkssought to redress the scales in favour of the Turks.

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The yenicheries who, in earlier times were a driving force inexpanding the empire, had gradually become more of an encum-brance than a help. Their voice became all-powerful in I

.stanbul; any

sultan who ignored them put his own life at risk. Together with thereligious establishment, the yenicheries constituted a formidablereactionary force. They thwarted any move to reorganise or mod-ernise the army until many of their members were killed in themutiny of 1826. The yenicheries were disbanded and, henceforth,the sultan conscripted most of his army from the Turkish/Muslimcommunity. The training of this new army was entrusted largely tothe Prussians (later the Germans). Cadets were also sent to France tolearn the skills of modern warfare.

These cadets returned with other new ideas, toothe ideas ofthe French Revolution. The Young Turk movement grew out of thisdissatisfaction. Years of failure on so many fronts had made peopleamenable to radical ideas. The new movement operated through an


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The Golden Horn, I.stanbul, 1919. The tall minarets of the mosques are still a

prominent feature in the cityscape. AWM G01783


organisation called the Committee of Union and Progress. Itsmembers were drawn mostly from the army and the emergingprofessional classes.

One prominent leader in the group was Enver, a battalion com-mander in Macedonia. He and his followers successfully led thecommittee in a struggle which resulted in the Young Turks gainingcontrol in I

.stanbul (the 1908 Revolution). In 1909, they appointed a

new sultan who, unlike his predecessors, was only a titular figure-head. A constitution, a parliament and a cabinet took the reins ofthe empire. These actions made the Young Turks very popular.However, in 1913, Enver and his Young Turks associates staged acoup dtat, displaced the parliament, installed a new sultan and tookdirect control. The new rulers tried to rejuvenate the old system bygoverning with an iron fist. Hundreds of old officers in the Ottomanarmy were retired overnight and the deposed sultan was kept underhouse arrest until his death in 1918. The government ruthlessly sup-pressed any opposition from minority groups within the empire, suchas the Armenians.

Enver emerged as the truly strong man of the new administra-tion and became virtually the uncrowned ruler of the OttomanEmpire. He was part of the ruling class with a lot of power and influ-ence, having married the sultans niece in 1913. He assumed the titleEnver Pasa (Pasa roughly translates into English as General). Enverhad spent some time in Germany as a military attach and he greatlyadmired that nations achievements. As his personal authority grew,so too the countrys friendship with Germany flourished.

The Germans were very keen to cultivate Enver as a friend in thehope that it would yield them positive returns in trade and territory.In particular, the Germans sought control over the vast oil depositsthat lay within the Ottoman lands. They were not the only ones atabout this time to realise that oil was fast becoming an extremelyvaluable commodity and a great logistical weapon in wartime. Thepresence of oil in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) had been noted sinceancient times. The classical Greek historian, Herodotus, for example,wrote of pitch (bitumen) being used as a binding agent in the wallsof Babylon. German geologists had visited the area in 1871 andreported enthusiastically about natural seepages of oil.

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In 1899, the Germans offered the Ottomans the financial capitaland technical expertise to build a railway linking Berlin and Baghdad(capital of Mesopotamia). In return for their assistance, the Germansasked among other things that they be granted the mineral (includ-ing oil) rights twenty kilometres each side of the railway track. Thisoffer aroused the suspicions of the Ottoman Government which sub-sequently learned of the oil deposits and rejected the German proposal.Curiously, however, no steps were then taken to exploit the oil.

Even before the turn of the century, oil companies were urgingBritains Royal Navy to convert its coal-powered ships to oil-firedengines. Senior naval officers readily accepted that oil-firing offeredsignificant advantages over coal: increased speed, extended range,smokeless burning, improved manoeuvrability and more spaceaboard ship for armaments. Oil also meant easy refuelling at searather than always docking for coal loading. Britain, however, lackedany known deposits of oil and this factor alone convinced most thatconversion would not be in the Royal Navys best interests.


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The German Embassy, I.stanbul, c.1914 with a group of Ottoman soldiers in the

right foreground. National Library of Australia


In 1911, Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord of theAdmiralty. He was convinced that oil was the right fuel for the Navy,saying in an address to the British Parliament in July 1913: We mustbecome the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of atleast a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require.1

To achieve this goal, Churchill persuaded the British Government tobuy two million pounds worth of shares in the Anglo Persian OilCompany. The parliamentary Act authorising the purchase received

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Liman von Sanders, the German general whooversaw the re-organisation of the OttomanArmy in 1913. He subsequently commanded theOttoman and German forces on Gallipoli in 1915.AWM J00200


its Royal Assent in late July 1914, less than a week before the GreatWar began.

Germany, in the meantime, was taking positive steps to furtherits links with the Young Turks. In December 1913, a Germanmilitary mission headed by General Liman von Sanders arrived inI.stanbul to reorganise the Ottoman Army. In a letter to his ambas-

sador in I.stanbul, the German Emperor wrote: Do not forget that I

want to see Turks on my side. You may find good friends amongstyoung Turkish officers who were trained in Germany.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, great imperialist powers werelining up against each other in two mighty alliances. On one side,Britain, France and Russia had combined in what was termed theTriple Entente; on the other, Germany and AustriaHungarytogether constituted the Central Powers. The Ottomans sought tosteer a middle course between these two massive power blocs by cul-tivating friendships with both sides. Several attempts were made toconclude a non-aggression pact with the Entente powers but allapproaches failed. Britain rejected the Ottomans overtures on threeseparate occasions. In late May 1914, the Young Turks went to Russiain search of a suitable pact but once again made no headway.

On 28 June 1914 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand andhis wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, Serbia. Austria held Serbiaresponsible for the murders and issued an ultimatum to the Serbiangovernment on 23 July. Russia resented Austrias strident demandsand stood by its ally, Serbia. Over the next few days, the complex webof alliances rapidly drew all the great European powers into war.

Enver Pasa signed a secret alliance with Germany on 2 August1914, the day after the Central Powers had declared war on Russia.By 4 August, a general state of war existed between the Entente andthe Central Powers. Enver Pasa had, for the moment, kept hiscountry out of the war. His pact with Germany ensured that he hada powerful ally if any other nation attacked them. By the same token,the pact also threatened to draw the Ottomans into the newEuropean battlefields.

Mustafa Kemal, an able young officer and an important memberof the Young Turks movement, was only one of many members ofthe Committee of Union and Progress who opposed the alliance with


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Germany. Their reasoning was simple: if Germany loses, theOttoman Empire is finished; if she wins, the empire merely becomesher satellite.

Enver Pasa curtly dismissed these reservations. He could hearthe drums of war approaching, and hoped they might recapture pastglories and lost territories. A string of coincidences made it just thatbit easier for Enver to take the Ottoman Empire into the war. Theempires navy had very close links with Britain; British officers heldkey positions and two new warships were being built in Britain. The

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This cartoon from the English magazine, Punch,11 November 1914, typifies the Allied view that theOttoman go

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